Of Lovers and Kings
by Rory J. Evans
Summary: Eustace/Rilian and Peter/Caspian. Sometimes history repeats itself. As for Eustace, he's glad that this time, it didn't.


Disclaimer: Not C.S. Lewis who wrote The Silver Chair for which there are spoilers. This also features slash so beware.

"Eustace?"

Rilian was on his back idly staring up at the play of light on the ceiling. Eustace silently decided that his name sounded better on Rilian's lips than it had ever sounded on anyone else's.

"Hmm?" He tugged the loose shirt over his head and began to lace up the tie in the front. From beneath his fringe of hair and out of the corner of his eye, he could see Rilian bite his lip and turn his head. It made him feel oddly exposed.

"Do you think you'll be leaving soon?"

Rilian always made him feel oddly exposed - his voice and gaze so hopeful that it made Eustace wonder if he was too good to be King, too naive.

Eustace finished the tie with trembling hands and tried to smile, but all he could manage was a deep and sad sigh which might or might not have meant yes. "If it is Aslan's will."

Rilian half-turned, eyes shining with something Eustace couldn't place. "When do you think you'll come back?"

--

Jill had no reason to stay. She wanted hot baths and warm beds and tables laden with food. She wanted the comforts that were offered at the end of a long adventure and the pleasures of deep carpets and fire places and slow, unhurried, and filling memories.

"I wish I was at home," she said, but Eustace bit his lip and said nothing.

He wasn't thinking of home or warmth or the end of anything. He wanted what was standing just beyond the crowd, separated from him only by a few meters. He wanted the dark Prince who was once a Dark Knight, who had long been lost and who he had found, who was comfort and home and all of those things that Jill had desired.

All _he_ wanted was Rilian.

--

In the Experiment House, holding hands was something that was not explicitly forbidden. Eustace found it ironic that he could only think of that as he and Rilian walked through the gardens of Cair Paravel with loosely intertwined fingers.

Holding hands with boys was.

He told Rilian so and his friend chuckled. "Not here," he said with a light shake of his head and didn't let go of his hand until after they had said their good-nights at the door to Eustace's room.

Once inside, Eustace reverently touched the hand that had been holding Rilian's and the cheek where he could still feel the soft press of his lips.

--

Of the both times Eustace had been in Narnia, he had yet to go inside Cair Paravel. When he did, dragged along behind an excited Rilian, he was glad that the Prince was the one to take him.

The look on his face as he slowly came into recognition of all of the things they passed (There was my old playroom and look, Eustace, that tower is the one that I broke my arm trying to climb out of.) was one that Eustace thought he couldn't get enough of.

He had taken to staring at Rilian's face so that he could witness the beginnings of each spark of happiness, just the slight upturning of his lips and glistening in his eyes. Eustace couldn't help but give a wide smile of his own at the melodic contagious laughter of the Prince whose skin was lit up brilliantly by sunshine and whose face showed no more - and Eustace vowed to make sure it would never again show - traces of darkness.

--

Eustace found it odd that Peter had his own tombstone, one covered in the ancient ivy only seen in drawings of medieval castles or ruined palaces. He found it even odder still that it had, to it's left, the freshly dug grave of King Caspian the Tenth, the grass not yet grown into the lush green it would be by the end of summer.

That was how Rilian found him, hours later, staring at the two graves beneath the deep grove of whispering trees and the setting sun that foretold of a warm night. The Narnian air made him look older, Rilian thought, and he wondered if this was what Eustace looked like when he was faced with the brisk sea air, something he wished he had seen.

Eustace heard his footsteps, but didn't turn towards them. He only asked aloud, when Rilian had wrapped his arms around him from behind and leant his chin on his shoulder, "Why are they like that?" but felt like a petulant child immediately after doing so.

"It's custom," Rilian replied simply.

Eustace looked around to note the other symbolically empty graves of the Pevensies, placed at each of the four directions: Lucy to the east, Edmund to the west, Susan to the south. But they were all singular, save for Peter's north facing one.

Rilian allowed himself a chuckle at Eustace's furrowed brow. He imagined his father was laughing too, from wherever he was.

"Didn't you know?" He flicked his head in the direction of his father's grave. Rilian breathed low in Eustace's ear, smiling when he elicited a slight shiver, as he began reading the titles off the tombstone. "Caspian the Tenth, True King of Narnia, Lord of Cair Paravel, Emperor of the Lone Islands."

He stopped where the list in white marble ended and placed a kiss just below Eustace's ear. "Lover of Peter the High King."

Eustace gasped and started to say, wide eyes darting back and forth between the graves "But your mother-"

Rilian gave his neck another kiss and buried his nose in Eustace's hair. "Met my father years after your cousin came back to his own world. All_ I _ever heard were stories of the Old Narnia and of King Peter the Magnificent who ruled during the Golden Age and restored my father to his rightful throne. And when I read the letters and the Chronicles, I knew for sure."

"Letters and Chronicles? The ones still being written, you mean?"

Rilian looked fondly on his father's grave, remembering the time he had gotten into his (what was really Peter's old room) chambers in Cair Paravel and looked through the chest filled with sheets of paper - some in Caspian's hand and some in Peter's - and the neatly filed reams bound with string and leather that chronicled King Peter's second stay in Narnia.

"No, the other chronicles already written by my father. And the letters that they wrote back and forth through the grace of Aslan - they're in those chronicles too."

Eustace nodded in understanding. All the times that he had seen Peter fervently scribbling on any scrap of paper he could find or reading with avarice from elegant parchment - they all made sense. All the times when Peter locked himself in his room and came out only for dinner with hastily brushed away tear trails on his face or silly grins across his lips or when his hands trembled as he folded and refolded the odd bits of paper as his siblings looked on sadly - those made sense too.

He would have liked to see them, as they would help him know his cousin better, and he knew that the Prince would show them to him eventually, but for the moment he was comfortable, leaning back against Rilian's warmth.

"I guess it runs in the family," he said to which Rilian chuckled.

--

In the weeks after the King's death, Eustace found himself staring at Rilian and trying to find the Caspian in him.

Sometimes he did: the way his head angled proudly towards the horizon reminded him of Caspian at the bow of the _Dawn Treader_, the way he pushed his hair back through his fingers echoed entirely of the late King, the way his body was slender and strong came from his father's own build.

His accent was less pronounced than Caspian's deep and rich one, but Eustace knew that Rilian could slip into exotic Spanish when ceremony or need called for it. He didn't roll his r's off of his tongue, but teased them out between his lips, said every word as if he were tasting it, and the actions made Eustace want to kiss the sounds off his mouth as soon as they came out.

Caspian and Peter were hard and rough. Countless times, Eustace had encountered Peter tracing what he thought, at the time, were war wounds, but now actually seemed more like marks of a different sort. He and Rilian were gentler, leaving light scrapings only for their feeling and not their permanence - they enjoyed the comfort that Eustace would be able to stay in Narnia indefinitely.

Where Caspian was passionate like wild summer, Rilian was calm and allowed himself to take and be taken with only a few soft cries to voice his pleasure. Eustace remembered the nights aboard the _Dawn Treader _when he thought he had heard Caspian's choked and broken cries of "Peter" (that confused him at the time) loud enough to be heard over sounds of palm on flesh and breaking waves on creaking ship.

He sometimes longed for the abandon and urgency of the former Kings. Peter could hardly sit still for five minutes and constantly fidgeted about with nothing to do. Eustace realized now that after coming back to England from Narnia, his palms itched for something to touch, for swords, for battle, for Caspian.

Eustace always had plenty to touch. Rilian was one for gentle caresses and light strokes, for fingers in hair and breath on neck, for warm hugs in winter and cool naked nights in summer.

He sometimes wondered what it would be like if Rilian was weathered and tan, calloused and scarred, like Caspian, with darker hair and lighter thoughts. But on quiet afternoons like this with the Prince's head in his lap and acres of delicious skin splayed before him, soft and lightly bronzed, he was grateful that Rilian wasn't his father because Caspian belonged to Peter and this - this was his and it was so much better.

--

Eustace often thought of the Chronicles of Narnia, the ones penned in Caspian's hand that he had made his task to copy into proper tomes. It was to be a present for Rilian's coming birthday, but even though he worked each morning, before breakfast and before Rilian was even up, he had only just started on the first of the letters that had taken him a week to arrange in chronological order. Caspian was in the habit of dating them; Peter, unfortunately, wasn't.

The sun was just barely peaking over the bottoms of the window sills and shining into his eyes when he stifled a yawn and reread the middle portion of a letter that Caspian had apparently never sent.

_"...The men of my court have been asking me why I haven't gotten married or why, at least, I haven't started looking for a wife. What would you have me tell them? That I already am? _

_That's the easy answer. But here I have to lie, make up excuses about women squinting and having freckles as if I were that shallow and callous to reject them on that basis alone. _

_Have I not lovingly kissed every freckle on your back (remember that time, in the moonlight) and on your arms and the small creases at your eyes when you worry? I love them, if only because they are yours. _

_Come back to me, Peter. Come back to me because one day they will find the woman that they feel was made to fit me and then what can I tell them? That I was created only to fit into you? Peter, their beloved High King of Old? No, I cannot soil your good name and I doubt they would believe me anyway. But still..."_

"Eustace!"

Eustace quickly thanked Aslan that the ink was dry and slammed the leather book shut, the original letter still inside on the page. He cleared his throat and attempted to adopt a casual pose by leaning his elbows back on the edge of the desk, back effectively hiding the book.

"In here," he called to Rilian who opened the door to the room only seconds later. He looked flustered but relieved and Eustace's face fell.

He had forgotten to leave a note. Whenever he had gone to copy the text in the early morning (something that was happening with an increasing frequency) he always left a brief excuse on the table next to the bed, a light kiss to Rilian's forehead, and a promise to make it up to him later.

"I'm sorry-" he began before Rilian's hand waved whatever apology he was preparing away.

"It's all right. I was just worried." Rilian crossed his arms and squinted at the sun, noting how high it was in the sky, and asked with an amused chuckle "What are you doing here?"

Eustace tried to cover being caught by giving him a surreptitious glance before whistling conspiratorially. "Wouldn't you like to know." At the Prince's pointed look and raised eyebrows that clearly meant that he did, Eustace held up his hands.

"I was looking through some of your father's old letters." Which wasn't exactly a lie, but he felt that he didn't need to elaborate any further - Rilian would know soon enough.

"Oh," Rilian said as Eustace stood, and he stepped back to allow him to come through the door.

Eustace touched the ring in his pocket, slipped it on and off his fingertip, testing its tangibility. Soon, he told himself. He wasn't going to have any regrets like Peter and Caspian. All he needed was the perfect moment.

He followed Rilian into the hall and shut the door behind him, casting one final glance at the book now illuminated by the dawn light. Their hands naturally found each other and with the small hint of a teasing smile, Rilian asked "Find anything interesting?"

Eustace offered back one of his own and they started walking. "Maybe. You'll find out. Soon."


End file.
